Bad news : where the press goes wrong in the making of the president / Robert Shogan.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 278-295) and index.

1. The Enablers -- 2. 1968: "The Omnipotent Eye" -- 3. 1972: "The Greatest Goddam Change" -- 4. 1976: The Talent Scouts -- 5. 1980: Hostage to Crisis -- 6. 1984: "You Cover the News, We'll Stage It" -- 7. 1988: Character Study -- 8. 1992: Beat the Press -- 9. 1994: Not the Russian Revolution -- 10. 2000: Seduction on the Straight-talk Express -- 11. Ballots on Broadway -- 12. From Liebling's Law to Gresham's Law.

"In Bad News, correspondent Robert Shogan draws on the lessons of nine presidential elections to assess the power and role of the press in the making of the president. The media, Mr. Shogan argues, now play the role of enablers. Without fully realizing it, they allow and abet the abuse of the political process by the candidates and their handlers.".

"Bad News targets not only the machinations of the competing campaigns but the innate weaknesses and limitations of the press corps, with special attention to the 2000 election. "Too often journalists, myself included," Mr. Shogan writes, "have been unwilling to learn what they do not know, and to make the information they possess relevant and important to their audiences.

Too many of us, eager for attention, have been too willing to create stories that are larger than life and reality, and too impressed with our own importance to benefit from the criticism leveled against our work.""--BOOK JACKET.